Trump flashes anger about Alabama forecast as Dorian bears down on Carolinas

The president tweeted multiple times on Thursday about his dubious meteorological claim.

By QUINT FORGEY

09/05/2019 08:50 AM EDT

Updated 09/05/2019 01:09 PM EDT

2019-09-05T01:09-0400

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

President Donald Trump insisted once again on Thursday that initial forecasts for Hurricane Dorian put Alabama at dire risk, digging in on his dubious meteorological claim even as the storm started having real impact on the East Coast.

“In the early days of the hurricane, when it was predicted that Dorian would go through Miami or West Palm Beach, even before it reached the Bahamas, certain models strongly suggested that Alabama & Georgia would be hit as it made its way through Florida & to the Gulf,” Trump tweeted.

Story Continued Below

“Instead it turned North and went up the coast, where it continues now,” he continued in a second post. “In the one model through Florida, the Great State of Alabama would have been hit or grazed. In the path it took, no. Read my FULL FEMA statement. What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!”

A little less than two hours later, Trump tweeted a third time: “Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast). The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!”

Trump on Wednesday was the subject of online mockery after an Oval Office storm briefing in which he showed off an apparently doctored National Hurricane Center projection of Dorian’s early track that appeared to be hand-altered to include Alabama.

But when asked about what looked like a conspicuous Sharpie mark on the federal forecast at an event later in the afternoon, Trump repeatedly said “I don’t know,” and announced the White House would issue “a better map” with “many models” advising that “in all cases Alabama was hit, if not likely, in some cases pretty hard.”

Eric Trump, the president’s son, also sought to attack journalists’ coverage of the episode on Thursday — slamming a report by the Washington Post and sharing on Twitter a National Hurricane Center graphic dated Aug. 29 showing parts of Alabama with a 5-10 percent chance of receiving sustained winds in subsequent days.

“This pettiness from the @washingtonpost is exactly why the public hates the media,” he wrote online. “This is a basic graphic from the NHC – I don’t think it’s beyond comprehension that Alabama was in the path had the storm not gone North. Stop the BS. The Washington Post is a joke. #Alabama.”

It is possible Trump was alerted to Dorian’s potential effects on Alabama in early briefings, when disaster officials feared the hurricane could cross southern Florida, enter back into the Gulf of Mexico and turn toward the Panhandle. Such a path would have put Alabama in close proximity to the storm.

Still, when Trump first tweeted Sunday that Alabama and a handful of states along the southeastern coast of the U.S. “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” the National Hurricane Center already forecast that Dorian’s trajectory had veered far from Alabama.

And in a tweet roughly 20 minutes after Trump’s weekend post, Birmingham’s branch of the National Weather Service clarified that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian,” because its “system will remain too far east.”

But Trump’s persistent focus on his own claim Thursday, which came as Dorian bore down on the coast of South Carolina, provoked fresh criticism. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., remarked that “I feel sorry for the president,” calling the controversy over the modified map “humiliating” and “an embarrassing moment” for the United States.

“What we’re seeing there is literally pathetic,” Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate, told CNN. “It makes you feel a kind of pity for everybody involved, and that’s not how I want to feel about the president — whether it’s for my party or the other.”

Another of Trump’s 2020 challengers, Republican former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, had pledged Wednesday that “if elected I will NEVER redraw a National Weather Service map to cover up my own dumb mistake.”

Fox News’ Janice Dean, the senior meteorologist at Trump’s favored cable network, pointed out Wednesday that “Alabama was NEVER in the official cone” forecast by the National Hurricane Center, and described the embellished map presented from the White House as “inaccurate, misleading and fake.”

Former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate on Thursday said emergency managers rely on National Hurricane Center forecasts “with no additions to that product,” and chastised Trump for relitigating the Alabama dispute while Dorian continues to churn northward.

“You know, if you’re going to misstate something, that happens. You should just correct it and let it go. But it is, I think, a distraction from what we should be focused on,” Fugate told MSNBC, adding that “we still have a lot of storm to go” and citing ongoing response efforts in the Bahamas.

NBC host and weatherman Al Roker also said Thursday the squabble was “a bit of a distraction” that “could have been easily tamped down,” but wasn’t. “I think folks know who to depend on, and no disrespect to the president of the United States, but he’s not in the business of doing forecasts,” Roker told MSNBC.

The blowback appeared to embolden Trump on Thursday. He also retweeted a map plotting Dorian’s likely paths that he first posted online Wednesday evening, which was dated Aug. 28 and appeared to originate from the South Florida Water Management District.

“This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages,” Trump wrote in an accompanying message. “As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama. I accept the Fake News apologies!”

That map included a disclaimer stating that “NHC Advisories and County Emergency Management Statements supersede this product,” and the graphic “should complement, not replace, NHC discussions.”

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

This article tagged under:

Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox.